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Practice Manager | Client record - Show preferred name

We have a number of clients who have a preferred Name other than their legal name. Whilst we can only put in their legal name (for the preparation of their returns) it would help our staff and the rest of the team to be able to put in their 'PREFERRED NAME' so that it showed up in the main contact area in XPM so that they would know to call the client by their preferred name rather than their legal name. A lot of clients get upset if you dont call them by their preferred name.

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Sonya Krajina shared this idea  ·   ·  Report…  ·  Admin →
delivered  ·  AdminKelly Munro (Community Manager, Xero) responded  · 

Hi everyone, back with an update 🙂 As some may have seen on our Blog on 8th Nov we introduced a new field for individual and sole trader client types - Display name!
This is an open entry field, and enables you to enter your preferred client name that’s shown when searching for clients in XPM and HQ.
The Display name will become mandatory for individual client types with the First and Last Name fields becoming optional.

From this date, for individual and sole trader client types;
Existing - When you edit an existing individual client type you’ll be able to change Display name to what you prefer without touching First and Last names.
New - When adding a new individual client type, you’ll have full control to enter the client Display name and First and Last name.

These changes are all steps toward providing a single source of truth for your client data across HQ and XPM in the future - we appreciate your feedback through the forums here and look forward to seeing your thoughts on the changes.

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  • Freya Pieroz commented  ·   ·  Report

    This is critical for situations where the name of record needs to match a legal name, but in all other situations, if you use that name no one has a clue who you're talking about!

    Imagine you have two John David Smith's, but one likes to be called John and the other JD. You would distinguish between them by their preferred name, but that's not their legal name associated with their ABN. Having a preferred name field is the solution to the problem of distinguishing these two accounts without altering the details that are required to be identical to their full legal name.

  • Jenelle Daley commented  ·   ·  Report

    We have clients that prefer to be called by their middle name or another name. It would be good to identify this so when calling our client their preferred name is used.

  • Meagan Wallace commented  ·   ·  Report

    Displaying Middle names so we can distinguish which client is which. We have quite a few clients with the same name and unless you are actually in the client section you cannot see who is who. This is very frustrating and time consuming having to continually go back to clients and search for the correct one before you can do anything. Even showing the initial from the middle name would help.

  • Sonya Krajina commented  ·   ·  Report

    Yes the 'Other Name' field is used for middle names as it flows through to the tax return. We too added a custom field but again as it is below everything else it gets missed by staff.

    Come on Xero PLEASE update the system to meet this need.

  • Jen Heath commented  ·   ·  Report

    I agree with the below comments, and understood that 'Other Name' was to be used for client's middle name. In fact, the 'Other Name' flows through to the AU Income Tax Returns in this way.

    The suggestion that was provided to me was to add the client's preferred name as a 'Contact' on their client file, however there should be a genuine field for this, and we should be able to select a setting to 'use preferred name as salutation' where applicable.

  • Juliana Kean commented  ·   ·  Report

    Agree with Melanie as we have multiple clients that have same first and last names - so use the "other name" for the middle name to identify them. Also the "other name" shows on NZ tax returns - so would prefer this to be the clients middle name. As a workaround for trade names we set these up as a separate contact under the client so they are searchable.

  • Melanie McPhillips commented  ·   ·  Report

    We use 'other name' to note the clients middle name. If we were to use this as they preferred name too, it would likely cause confusion and issues. Having a separate field for preferred names and trading names would be ideal, particularly if the names are searchable - if it can't be in the main profile section, then near the contacts would be good too :)

  • Ally Eustace commented  ·   ·  Report

    I agree, particularly difficult with sole traders with a trading name!

  • Megan Harrbridge commented  ·   ·  Report

    Yes! this is frustrating - we had made a custom field, but because this is so low down the page, it often gets missed.

  • Aileen Pennington commented  ·   ·  Report

    Yes, It would be useful for Sole Traders too who have a trading name as there is nowhere to enter that.

  • Maneesha Marzol commented  ·   ·  Report

    We have really struggled with this since moving to XPM from HandiSoft. As a temporary solution, we have created a custom field for the preferred name and ensure staff check this before contacting the client. We also use this name as the 'contact name'.